Statement on the position regarding Wigan Heritage Services from Rodney Hill, Chief Executive of Wigan Leisure and Culture Trust.

1.   Wigan Leisure and Culture Trust is about to implement a new 'vision' for the service, as was outlined in the press release of 24 January. The aims of the overall vision are to deliver key projects which will open up the enjoyment of Wigan's heritage to a larger number of people across the borough. These projects include:

• Widening the delivery of school curriculum activities based on Wigan's heritage, to reach up to 2,700 schoolchildren per year,
• Providing heritage based learning activities for families and adults with special needs, attracting up to 800 people a year.
• Supporting Townships to develop local activities around their local environment and events special to their identity, including establishing a 'Curating in the Community' programme
• Assessing the heritage collection of the Trust (which holds 25,000 items) to ensure more can be utilised through display and loans to local groups and schools
• Delivering up to £800,000 of improvements in the History Shop through a major development programme to increase both physical access and exhibition and interpretation material, (a bid to the Heritage Lottery Funding has been made and a decision will be made in 2007)

2.   A first step to enable the Service to deliver this long list of actions which will benefit the whole borough of Wigan, is to make a temporary reduction in venue opening hours which will enable professional heritage staff to deliver new projects and activities while still providing a high quality service at heritage venues. The Trust has discussed this with key stakeholders who have appreciated the intention of establishing an improved service within the next two to three years. For example the Friends of the History Shop agreed at their meeting of 24 January that they "reluctantly accept the need for a review of the opening hours at the History Shop and at Leigh, and support the Heritage Service in their ambition to redirect resources to create an enhanced service in the future. It is the sincere hope of the Friends that this will not be a long term change and that the issue of opening hours will be reviewed at the end of the proposed project work period (December 2007). The Friends group wishes are that following this review the opening hours will return to existing levels.'' This is a position the Trust is entirely supportive of - all those involved in heritage in the borough want to make it as relevant and popular to it can be, and involve many more of its residents.

3.   The Trust is therefore looking to deploy its staff in the right places at the right times according to customers needs - while expanding the range of heritage activities on offer to people across the borough - and to that end is undertaking a consultation process to find out when people most want access to its venues. The press release gives details of how to take part in this exercise, but otherwise this can be done at the History Shop, Leigh Town hall or Leigh Library (Local History Desk), and we would encourage people to give us their suggestions.